Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s acclaimed second novel, Daughters of Night, is shortlisted for the 2022 Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award. To celebrate this, Historia dragged her away from editing her next book to talk about the award and her writing. Congratulations on being shortlisted! For anyone who hasn’t yet read Daughters of Night, can you sum it […]
The Little Wartime Library by Kate Thompson
London, 1944, and Clara Button is no ordinary librarian. While the world remains at war, in East London Clara has created the country’s only underground library, built over the tracks in the disused Bethnal Green tube station. Down here a secret community thrives: with thousands of bunk beds, a nursery, a café and a theatre […]
The Gifts by Liz Hyder
October 1840. A young woman staggers alone through a forest in Shropshire as a huge pair of impossible wings rip themselves from her shoulders. Meanwhile, when rumours of a ‘fallen angel’ cause a frenzy across London, a surgeon desperate for fame and fortune finds himself in the grips of a dangerous obsession. One that will […]
A Night of Flames by Matthew Harffy
Northumbria, AD 794. Those who rule the seas, rule the land. None know the truth of this more than the Vikings. To compete with the seafaring raiders, the king of Northumbria orders the construction of his own longships under the command of oath-sworn Norseman, Runolf. When the Vikings attack again, the king sends cleric turned […]
Historia interviews: Minette Walters
The award-winning, bestselling author Minette Walters speaks to Frances Owen for Historia. I was delighted to talk to Minette Walters by phone recently to discuss her latest novel, The Swift and the Harrier, set in her home county of Dorset during the English Civil Wars of 1642–51, which is out in paperback today. This is a […]
The Lost Man of Bombay by Vaseem Khan
Bombay, 1950. When the body of a white man is found frozen in the Himalayan foothills near Dehra Dun, he is christened the Ice Man by the national media. Who is he? How long has he been there? Why was he killed? As Inspector Persis Wadia and Metropolitan Police criminalist Archie Blackfinch investigate the case […]
The Plant Hunter by TL Mogford
1867. King’s Road, Chelsea, is a sea of plant nurseries, catering to the Victorian obsession with rare and exotic flora. But each of the glossy emporiums is fuelled by the dangerous world of the plant hunters – daring adventurers sent into uncharted lands in search of untold wonders to grace England’s finest gardens. Harry Compton […]
The Manhattan Girls by Gill Paul
New York City, 1921. An impossible dream. The war is over, the Twenties are roaring, but in the depths of the city that never sleeps, Dorothy Parker is struggling to make her mark in a man’s world. A broken woman. She’s penniless, she’s unemployed and her marriage is on the rocks when she starts a […]